Randy Dan isn’t one to take a dare lightly, especially this one. Here was a chance to become a company legend and make art at the same time, not to mention over a hundred bucks. He is a big, fair-headed Midwesterner. Eating is, and always has been much more to him than a biological necessity. Randy is a fan of the I.F.O.C.E. (International Federation of Competitive Eaters) and creator of the world’s first fantasy competitive eating league (the idea never took hold.) Randy Dan will proudly show off his wings, a trophy from a college hot wing-eating contest, to anyone wandering past his cube.

Up until a year ago, RD’s shape attested to his fascination with the gastronomical arts. He got a little healthy living religion and his weight bounced around as he experimented with a variety of diets. Randy ultimately reached a new, lower mass equilibrium and, in our engineering parlance, achieved dimensional stability in the horizontal plane.

Roger heard the challenge from his table behind ours, and felt the train gaining speed.

“Hey, I’m in … for twenty.”

Within two minutes $400 dollars lay on the table. RD stopped eating. His eyes darted from the money to the fountain and around at his friends; he looked like a cornered deer. He spotted me and the same lightning thought flashed in our brains - heroes. I knew he was going for it. He shoved back from the table, sucked in a big breath and headed up front where the management clan had reconvened for the door prize drawing. He turned back to me and squeaked, “Hold the cash for me.”

A few weeks earlier we were sitting in his cube wasting time when the topic of heroes came up. Randy Dan was going off about some corporate mega-slob, how he’d started with nothing, made billions, revolutionized retailing, dah-dah-dah.